19-Year-Old Arrested for Stealing Millions in Cryptocurrency and Hacking Major U.S. Firms

United States: U.S. authorities have arrested a 19-year-old teenager, Remington Goy Ogletree, who is linked to the Scattered Spider cybercrime gang. He is charged with hacking into a U.S. financial institution and two telecommunications companies. Ogletree stole company credentials by tricking employees with phishing messages sent via text and phone calls. 

He also pretended to be the victims’ ex IT support teams in some appropriately timed calls with the likely aim of pressuring the employees into visiting phishing sites which they were required to enter their usernames and passwords. 

As reported by Bleeping computer, the U.S. financial institution the Ogletree allegedly hacked reported to the FBI that about 149 of its employees were attacked in a phishing campaign (from the end October to mid-November 2023) that directed them to the fake landing site of the company. 

These phishing websites were meant to prompt the employees to enter other login details they used with the financial institution. 

“An examination of captured screenshots of the phishing messages contained statements that were designed to deceive the employees into surrendering their credentials to the attackers such as a message indicating that the ‘employee benefits package [was] updated’ or ‘your employee schedule has been modified’,” the complaint explains. 

‘Some of the phishing messages for the employees were ‘You have received an inquiry from HR’ or ‘Your VPN profile was updated’, 

Also, between October 2023 and May 2024, Ogletree employed the telecoms’ systems to send out more than 8.6 million phishing text messages to phone numbers across the United States intended to facilitate identity theft of recipients’ cryptocurrency. 

In his subsequent FBI interview, Ogletree stated that he knows “people who commit all sort of crimes” and “key Scattered Spider members” and that the hacking group target BPO companies because “they are less secure than the companies for which they work. 

CF Previous Scattered Spider arrests 

In the same month in May this year, the U.S. Justice Department arrested and charged five other suspects belonging to the cybercrime gang whose gang stole millions in cryptocurrency through singles SMS phishing attacks on as many as 50 targets. 

These five suspects stand charged with wire fraud, wire fraud conspiracy and aggravated identity theft – all of them attracting at least 20 years imprisonment.